When we were children and life was still wide open before us, they asked about our future, when we’d become grown ups. Right there all the magical moments disappeared! Thus they planted their seed and we became afraid, trembled and that’s the way we spent our lives.
“Los Momentos” by Los Blops,
Chilean musicians, 1971
My great-grandmother Margarita lived with my parents, my three sisters and me for a few of my early years, between 5 and 10 years old. She came from illiterate “campesino” parents and she was a determined, even intimidating character, who spent long hours tending our backyard. She was then in her mid-80s.
She was also a fervent Catholic and she spent at least a couple of hours every night praying to her copiously bleeding collection of wooden and plaster religious figures. In the penumbra created by a couple of candles, she would wear some head-to-toe flannel pajamas and, before starting the monotony of her prayers, she let her long gray hair down. It would almost reach the floor. Then, she would take off her false teeth and placed them in a glass of water.
Those floating teeth, with the light of the candles, sometimes flashed a distorted yellow grin.
Her room was located next to the bathroom. Since she kept the door ajar, every night, as we took turns brushing our teeth, her nightly ritual was a scary sight for our impressionable children’s eyes.
We would scurry back to our rooms and await the inevitable arrival of our great-grandmother. She insisted that we should say a prayer each night, before falling asleep. She would first come to my door and open it, without any ceremony. Standing toothless in the doorframe, she would demand: “Carlitos: your prayer!”
I learned a mercifully short rhyme that I would recite quite rapidly, eager to have her move to my sisters’ room as soon as possible: “With God I lay, with God I awake and The Virgin covers me with her shawl! Good night abuela!”
Finally, she would move on to extract the prayer from my sisters and I would be free of the rather unsettling nightly ceremony.
Fear and repentance were two words that always featured in any conversation related to religion: fear of God and repentance as a key to enter into Heaven. I recall thinking, even in those early years: “What does my great-grandma fear so much? Death? Fear of the unknown? What is she repenting for? What great sins is she guilty of?”
I never asked those questions. Somehow, it seemed inappropriate to ask them. Some things were to be left unquestioned. A great barrier came up: it was called faith. You either had it or not. And if you did not have it (or even suspected not to have it), you should better keep quiet.
Perhaps those forced regurgitations of my short nightly prayers were the basic reason as to why I never went to church and actually developed what I think is a healthy questioning attitude.
Nevertheless, as healthy as it might be to question certain subjects, it would take some guts to question them outloud. Religion is one of them. Vocally, or in a written form. Many moons passed before I dared.
Years later, when I was in middle school, I encountered another subject that was difficult to talk about: politics.
For 12 precious years, I attended a single place for my elementary through high school education. At the Liceo Manuel de Salas, an experimental school directly linked to the University of Chile, I first heard and witnessed heated discussions about political issues.
Not only verbal discussions, but also physical bloody battles between leftists, young catholics and right wingers.
I could not fathom why some 12-year-olds would beat each other over politics. It was, clearly, a divisive subject. I was a wide-eyed mute on that field, although I felt that my sympathy was, rather mysteriously, on the side of the leftists.
It was also at that time when I first heard some harsh phrases, among them “the only good communist is a dead communist.” It was a phrase that some said with hatred in their voices.
Again, I thought, what are people afraid of? Why say that ugly phrase, when one of our national intellectual heroes, the poet Pablo Neruda, was indeed a communist and we were asked to memorize some of his poetry? Was there some brainwashing going on? Had the communists taken over? What did all this mean?
When I timidly began to raise my questions about either religion or politics, I was told about the apparent taboo of discussing either religion or politics. “Never bring politics or religion into a conversation, if you want to keep things nice and peaceful.”
Years later, many years later, I have discussed those issues many times. I promoted and provoked their discussion as a teacher, because I learned that “keeping things nice and peaceful” only benefits those who are in control of politics and religion… and there is usually a strong complicity between those in charge of both subjects. The less people discuss, learn or question those issues, the better for those in charge.
Politics and Religion should not be kept off limits. An educated people is a freer people.